Nature Lover's Paradise

The Winking Rosebud Retreat is a Nature Lover’s Dream rich in a great diversity of forests, flowers, birds, and mammals.

The Winking Rosebud Retreat is located on the Big Rideau, and forms part of the Rideau Canal UNESCO World Heritage Site, the only Ontario World Heritage Site. It also incorporates the Frontenac Arch, another remarkable designation, as a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve.

UNESCO has designated 482 biosphere reserves in 102 countries around the world. Thirteen have been designated in Canada. Of those thirteen, four are located in Ontario: Georgian Bay Littoral, Long Point, the Niagara Escarpment, and the Frontenac Arch Biosphere Reserve. It is extremely rare for these two designations to coincide anywhere in the world offering up a great diversity in flora and fauna.

The Winking Rosebud Retreat also has wetlands, marshes and bogs as well as a number of beaver ponds with a rich diversity of amphibians and birds. There is also an incredible number of birds in the area: loons, blue and green herons, geese, Mallard ducks, Mergansers, hooded Mergansers, Pied-billed Grebe, Ring-billed Gull, Caspian Terns, and Trumpeter Swans. Other common birds include the following: ospreys, belted kingfishers, turkey vultures, wild turkeys, ruffed grouse, pileated woodpeckers.

Common mammals near the shore include the muskrat, beaver, mink, otter, raccoons, porcupines, and white tailed deer.

The Big Rideau is also immensely rich for its healthy species of fish: large mouth bass, small mouth bass, northern pike, crappie, lake trout, muskellunge, and walleye are some of the most common species.